Reboot Buggy Gets Back to Its Off-Road Roots

The modern automobile is more of a rolling living room than a car. Most people want comfort and connectivity — a four-wheeled lounge to wile away the journey. Joey Ruiter isn’t most people.

The Michigan-based industrial designer who tries to “avoid labels” and describes himself as “a thinker that can explore freely with real objects” has created the most bare-bones four-wheeler since the Willys-Overland Jeeps. And even those look plush in comparison to Ruiter’s Reboot Buggy.

But oddly enough, the Buggy’s life started small.

“I’ve wanted to design a new smart, green, city car for a while,” Ruiter tells WIRED. “As it progressed … it became obvious quickly this was not going in that direction.”

Inspiration came from the horseless carriages of the late 19th century, with a basic architecture, no roof and no amenities. And that form helped define the project.

“These were off-road vehicles, [because] roads didn’t exist,” Ruiter says. “Those first paths, first lanes, and first trips make up our roads today. I kept the notion that a car should be able to get us there if there is a road or not.”

‘It sounds strange, but I wanted the vehicle to determine its design.’

In order to achieve that goal, Ruiter started with … nothing. The Buggy is a ground-up design, with a custom built steel tube frame, an independent suspension with 26 inches of wheel travel fore and aft, 40-inch tires, and an aluminum deck lid. There are lights and brakes and a 470 horsepower small block V8 mounted amidships sending power to the wheels through a three-speed automatic transmission. But other than fulfilling the basic requirements that define a “car,” Ruiter wanted to keep it as basic as possible, focusing instead on what the Buggy wanted, not the driver.

“It sounds strange, but I wanted the vehicle to determine its design,” says Ruiter. “Even if it means ignoring the driver’s needs.”

The original idea came three years ago, but the Buggy took about nine months of hard labor to build, with Ruiter using basic tools and some welding skills to realize his project. Most of the parts can be found in junkyards, allowing the Reboot Buggy to be fixed and modified with even a rudimentary amount of mechanical skills.

“[It’s] basically an exercise in creating a capable vehicle with really common parts,” says Ruiter. “It doesn’t fit into a category since it came from nothing.”

And it tackles the terrain like nothing else, just at home on the road as the dunes — although the local fuzz might not see it as exactly “street legal”.

For his next project, Ruiter wants to get back to the city car idea. “As a car guy, I wanted a simple car but still fun,” Ruiter says, bemoaning the fact that traditional economy cars have evolved into boring appliances. “It is still over the top but in a completely different way. It’s a car you want to be in — want to drive.”

If that creation is anything like the Reboot Buggy, sign us up. But considering both projects are more functional art rather than practical (or legal) transportation, we doubt Ruiter will be taking deposits anytime soon.